Closure
by buckyfan1954
Summary: Rosalie Harlow wasn't the brightest person you could meet, nor was she very open-minded. Not knowing anything about her past, and wantedto keep it that way, afraid that she might be faced with disappointment. Natasha Romanoff, one of her only close friends, persuades her to look into it. Among their search for answers, Natasha finds that might lead her to a long lost friend..
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

* * *

Rosalie had her hands shoved in the pockets of her worn out hoodie from high school as she waited to board the subway taking through Downtown New York to get to class with ease. She figured it'd be better and way quicker than a taxi. Sometimes she couldn't stand the busy and crowded atmosphere of this city. The coffee eyed girl often wondered how she ended up here, or if accepting the scholarship from NYU was really worth it. Did she really have a choice in the first place? Her foster mom couldn't afford it, she should be grateful for everything that has happened to her this past year, but she couldn't help but feel like she wasn't on the right path. Rosie knew deep down inside she wasn't happy, in fact she could feel herself succumbing into depression, but she didn't want to admit that to herself. She was fine, everything was fine, her life was fine. There are people out there who would do anything for the life that she has and to get the opportunities she did. Rosie cursed at herself softly.

"Stop thinking, you know it does you no good." She muttered lowly to herself.

The subway pulled up and she boarded amongst the crowd of people, walking through the aisle looking for an empty seat. Rosie took the first one she saw and set her backpack down in the loft chair besides her to prevent anyone from sitting near. She pushed her amber hair behind her ear before leaning back in her seat and staring out the window.

"Something wasn't right, she could feel it. No, it didn't have anything to do with herself or her mood, but in the air around her. On this subway, in this room, she could sense a presence that meant to do harm. Her body tensed up and her eyes scanned around slowly, catching sight of a little girl with brown hair just like hers, but green eyes. She had to be at least 4 years old and was sitting on her father's lap, right beside her mom. They were laughing just quiet enough for only the three of them to hear as the small girl made faces imitating a fish. The scene was so happy, and full of innocence. She missed it when life was like that.

It took Rosie back to a particular moment about 15 years ago when she was just turning 4 or 5 years old, it was her birthday.

* * *

 _"Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you!" sang Elizabeth (her foster mom) to Rosalie. The girl sat at the dinner table with a wide enough smile, she was sure her cheeks were going to be sore tomorrow, along with a few other foster kids that also had faces with gratitude._

 _"Happy birthday dear Rosie.. happy birthday to you!" The last bit was sang in harmony with the woman and the rest of the kids at the table, followed by an applause and a giggle coming from Rosalie who looked at her cake then up at them. This was her family, she was sure of it, and she longed to stay with them forever._

 _"Make a wish dear." Elizabeth said. Rosie closed her eyes and thought for a moment before blowing out the candles. After she was finished, one of the kids turned to her, his name was Ryder and both of his eyes were a different color; gold and silver._

 _"What did you wish for? A hundred more Barbie dolls?" The little boy teased._

 _"Something even better! For us to be happy and together, forever and ever!"_

* * *

It was short lived.

Rosie was snapped out of her trance at the sudden halt of the metro that slammed her into the seat in front of her and screaming from the people around her. She shook her head to clear up her blurry vision and picked herself back up, balancing herself against the window. There was a huge hole above them to where you could see outside, weird alien-like creatures dressed in silver had crashed into the vehicle speaking a language she couldn't understand. They looked like reptiles, from space, there were about three of them and they were armed with weapons she had never seen before. Rosie dropped behind the seat to hide herself, and breathed heavily, looking back at the small family who were in distraught and the little girl was had tears coming down her cheeks, being guarded by the arms of her father. It was all surreal, but she knew she had to do something to protect the people on board.

She hurriedly threw off her hoodie and glanced around to make sure no one was looking. Soon, faded into thin air. Her feet stood her up slowly, just to make sure no one could see her and her transparent body took her down the aisle where the enemies stood. Rosie stood right in front of them, and they were completely oblivious to her presence. She was able to get a good look at them and god; they were quite disgusting. She looked down at her balled up fist. Well, here goes nothing.

She punched her fist right through the aliens chest and came out of Fade, his metal armor clenched around her armor and nearly made her scream, but at least he was dead now. The other two shot at her with blue, laser-like bullets that came from their guns and she used the alien she killed as a shield, withdrawing the supernatural weapon from the dead hand, it must've weighed a ton but balanced it on the aliens shoulder.

"Get out of here! Go! Go!" Rosalie screamed at the passengers behind her, watching them all frantically breakthrough the door and run away, catching one more look at the little girl that reminded her of herself.

Her attention turned back to the two reptilians before her still shooting, she winced and closed one eye to aim, and shot one through the face, making her stumble back and dropping the space gun. Two down, one to go and she went into Fade again, pulling her arm out from the body and found it covered in a purple blood. It was quite obvious now that whatever these things were, they were from a different planet, or maybe even universe. Rosalie had always believed in the supernatural and aliens, but never once did she think they would come to Earth in her life time.

She circled around her last scaly victim, who was looking around for her body as expected. He held the launcher in his cretin hands before he began shooting everywhere clearly becoming aggravated and that's when she jumped onto the creatures back coming out from her transparency and wrapped her hands around his neck, using everything in her to hopefully choke the creature, only for it to grab her by her shirt and be slammed onto the ground of the vehicle, making a loud groan leave her. Rosalie spun on the ground with a leg out and swept the alien onto the floor next to her and elbowed him in the face before quickly flipped herself around on all fours and wrapping her hands back around his neck. What seemed like a trillion bolts of energy, the vermin launched his foot her stomach, sending her body flying out the glass of the metro. Pain surged through her body and she coughed up blood, she could see the alien approaching her out of the corner of her eye. Grabbing two of the bigger shards of glass from the broken window around her in either of her hands, she forced herself up. Her feet ran towards the alien and quickly dropped back down to the ground, sliding on her knees when he shot at her then hopping back up to her feet, leaping and shoving the glass through both of his temples. A screech came from the alien as he was killed, and Rosalie let go of him, letting his body fall to the ground.

The beaten up girl stared at it thinking, 'What the literal fuck are those things?', before holding her hands up to her face to examine the cuts on her hand from the glass. She thought could hear more commotion above her outside, and headed up the staircase. Her thinking was right for once, and the streets of New York were chaotic. There were more of those aliens, a lot more, but something that concerned her even more was the giant hole in the sky which was where they were coming out from.

"What the fuck…" Rosalie said under her breath a few times as she turned around and looked at her surroundings. New York was in ruins. Though she didn't particularly like living here, it brought her despair to see it in such devastation and people dying.

All of that was two years ago. Rosalie was 21 now and stood in the same spot in the middle of the sidewalk, looking up at the buildings that were once torn apart and watched people walk along the pavement people once laid dead on. If you think that she saved the day back then, you're wrong. She didn't think that she could even if she tried. She only killed three of those things out of hundreds of them. It was a group of people, or more like highly elevated freaks of nature with supernatural abilities that did. They called themselves the Avengers. Rosalie knew she was being a hypocrite by calling them 'freaks of nature', because, well, she was one herself, but at least she didn't go around blowing up small countries like Sovokia. She got that their intentions were to protect the Earth, but it got kind of outrageous sometimes. It made her want to move to a different planet.

Nevertheless, over the two years Rosalie gained more control over her own supernatural abilities. Rosie wasn't quite sure how she got them, or where she came from, or what she even was. Every time she tried to remember, her mind gets taken back into a dark realm, where she sees her parents getting killed before her by some..man, or thing. She could never make out what he, or her was.

And for some strange reason, she thought it was better if she didn't know.

Quite frankly, she was fine with being in this world alone without knowing where she came from and not having a family. A few less things to worry about. However, for her powers, Rosalie discovered she was able to see the dead, enter people's dreams and even choose to give them a nightmare if she wished, and haunt them. It seemed very ghost-like, she figured she may as well be dead, except she was alive. On the outside, it may not be thought that she could do all these things, and more that she has yet figured out how to control yet. She looked just like any other person, and that was the way Rosalie liked it. At least she wasn't a total freak of nature.

"Her phone buzzed in her pocket, and it startled her to see that she was still standing in the middle of the sidewalk. She noted that she needed to stop getting lost in her own thoughts, and practice getting into other's.

"Hello?" Rosalie said into the receiver.

"Rose? It's Nat. I think I found something you might want to see."


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

* * *

Natasha Romanoff and Rosalie had been friends ever since the alien invasion. It turns out that these aliens were in fact from a completely different universe and were called the Chituari, and were being led by Loki in an attempt to take over the Earth. Rosalie didn't want to call it cliché, but it was, well, pretty cliché, and Loki's actions were predictable. The whole situation that day was as if it came straight out of a movie, she swore she had seen it somewhere, maybe not. Maybe she was just being an asshole, she just called an alien invasion to enslave the human race, cliché. How kind of you, Rosalie. Though, that's beside the point here.

Rosalie, being as oblivious as she is, didn't notice one of the Chituari vermin creeping up on her and then come Natasha to fortunately save her life, basically kicking the thing's ass. Seeing her do this, Rosie guess she had probably taken out at least 20 to 30 today, she was clearly way stronger and experienced in combat than she was. The most fighting Rosalie had ever done was just ten minutes ago down in the subway.

"You should probably pay more attention." Natasha walked up to her, clearly examining her. "Did you..fight one of these things? Sorry, couldn't help but notice the purple ooze dripping down your arm."

Rosalie glanced down and shrugged her shoulders. "Yeah, down at the subway, 3 of them. But I figure you've taken on way more."

Romanoff shrugged. "Yeah, but I'm more interested in how you did it." The redhead's eyes narrowed in at her. "If you fought and defeated them, you're clearly not just a regular civilian."

"You're right. I don't mean any harm, promise. They were going to kill those people in the subway, I couldn't let them, no one saw me." Rosalie explained to her, and was going to tell her about a few Chituari behind her because she was getting intimidated, but it seemed as if the iron suit came in and took care of them, it went without word.

"I know who you are though, the Black Widow." Rosie continued.

"More interested in who you are. Whenever we find someone who is a supernatural being they should be taken into S.H.I.E.L.D."

"Well I'm not interested in that. I'd like to maintain the normal life I have now. The abilities I have, they aren't that great anyway."

"Well then what are they?" Romanoff stepped closer. "Don't worry, you would still be able to maintain your normal lifestyle, whatever that maybe. Fury likes to keep an eye on-"

"Enough with the questions and persuading. I don't need anyone to keep an eye on me." Rose interrupted her, "I think you have a lot more bigger things to being worrying about right now." She said motioned to the portal in the sky before running off in the other direction, leaving a slight smirk on Romanoff's face.

"Did you get that Stark?"

"Yep."

About two or three months later after the incident, she showed up at Rosalie's apartment, and things went from there. They grew to be better friends, and Natasha decided to not make Rosalie turn herself into S.H.I.E.L.D as she felt something weird was going on. (Cough cough, HYDRA.) She saw that Rosalie wasn't up to anything bad, and truly believed that Rose was unsure of what she was. Amongst all of that, Natasha helped her grow stronger, and even trained her a little bit. Just so she could have some combat skills to back her up if she ever got caught in a situation like with the Chituari's again. It was possible.

Rosalie was glad that she and Nat were friends, it'd been awhile since she had really interacted with someone. Even though she preferred her own company most of the time, it did get lonely. They didn't see each other that often. Natasha was an agent, an Avenger. She had other things to do… like missions and kick butt. Rosalie was just a college student, she should've been going to parties and at least trying to /honestly/ pass her exams by studying, but being able to fade and look off of the paper of the kid with a 4.2 GPA was way easier.

Rosalie pulled up at the address Natasha had texted her. It was in the part of New York where there was..nothing. What was it called? Oh yeah, the country. Upstate New York where she grew up, and right before her was the foster home she grew up in. Old and abandoned in the middle of some grassland.

"Why here?" Rosalie walked up to the porch where Natasha stood in her dark navy blue jeans, a light nude jacket that complimented her auburn hair and black boots, her arms crossed over her chest. Her typical stance. "If we're going to hang out I would prefer it be somewhere less depressing."

"I figured you'd want to learn more of your past. I found some.. perplexing files in your foster mom's office." Romanoff shrugged her shoulders. "Thought it would might interest you."

"It's better if I don't know. Cause if I do I'll just wonder, and wonder, and wonder even more. Develop questions in my head that'll I spend way too much time searching for the answer to, facing the possibility of being disappointed and all my effort wasted. When I could be like, eating mozzarella cheese sticks or something." Rosalie explained to the woman before her.

"Everyone deserves to know about their past. There's nothing to be afraid of. I've told you all about mine." Natasha told her, the expression on her face gradually growing concerned. "And I don't think you want me knowing more about you."

Rosalie brought her lower lip between her teeth and averted her gaze downwards. Natasha could be pushy, and very persuasive. She had been hinting beforehand about beginning to look for where she came from, Nat thought it was important to 'know your roots'.

"Nat."

"I just don't want you to feel alone. It's a big world, a big universe, and you don't know where you're from. Where your place is. How you got here. I know how it is, and I know that you lose sleep over it sometimes."

Rosalie could feel her eyes burn, tears pricking at the edge of her waterline, daring to spill over but she held them back. She didn't need Natasha to give her a reality check, she knew she was alone already, she just wasn't ready to admit that to herself yet. Nat was spilling out every detail that she knew was true but kept hidden deep within herself. Somehow Natasha, damn Natasha was able to pull these things out and hit her with it. But what did she expect? She's the Black Widow, for fucks sake. Rosalie knew she was going to be faced with it sooner or later.

"I just want you to have some closure-"

"I don't /need/ closure Natasha!" Rosalie nearly shouted, shooting her head back up to look at her. The tears had won and were finally rolling down her heated cheeks. Her arms trembling, it had been a long time since she'd cried.

"I don't..I don't want to know where I came from! Or who my parents were, because what if I find out something terrible happened? What if I find out that they actually were killed by something, or even worse—someone! I don't need to know that! It would just make it worse! Every time I think of them they're dead, and I don't know if my mind is telling the truth or just playing tricks on me!" Rosalie continued with a sob, and cupped her hands over her mouth with the sleeves of her sweatshirt.

"What if they didn't even want me Nat? What if I was just a mistake?"

Rosalie shuddered and lowered herself down to sit on the steps on the porch as Natasha watched her. Her breakdown almost made the Black Widow cry herself, in fact pretty close, she was tearing up. Seeing someone she cared about in such despair wasn't always pleasant. She stepped over towards Rosalie who was looking out into the grassfield watching time pass by, tears still streaming down her face, making her skin glisten from the sun. Natasha took a seat beside her and glanced at her, then the clear blue sky. It was a beautiful day, way too beautiful for Rose to be crying.

"We don't see each other that often, but you're like my little sister." Natasha admitted to the girl besides her. "I just want you to be the happiest you can be, and not feel like you're alone. I know what I said, but I was just trying to get a reaction out of you. You're not alone. You and Clint are the closest people I have to family right now. I'm just looking out for you because I know the curiosity.. it bothers you."

Rosalie let out a shaky sigh, and looked over at her with appreciation. It was nice to know that she had someone looking out for her. She knew that she was, but it had gone unsaid, without any say, but it was comforting to hear Natasha say what she did.

"Thank you, I'm just." Rosalie muttered and wiped her tears with the sleeves of her sweatshirt. "I'm just not ready. Not now. I want to do it when I am, and do it alone. I think it'll be better that way."

Natasha nodded her head in understanding. "I just wanted to be here to make sure you just completely don't lose your mind while doing so."

They both laughed along with each other softly.

"I've already lost it."

"Don't worry, I don't think you're completely batshit crazy." Natasha said.

"Oh, I know I'm not crazy. You Avengers, you guys are the ones who are fucking crazy." Rosalie said, and soon she and Nat were both in a fit of giggles. "I mean seriously, come on. It's insane. I couldn't do any of that even if I wanted to."

Natasha snickered. "Well, yeah. You got that right, it does get pretty hectic. Ever since S.H.I.E.L.D was compromised and Sovokia..things have been pretty tense lately."

Rosalie nodded. "Where do you think he is?"

"Who?"

"Bruce. You guys had a thing going on didn't you?"

This made Natasha florid, bringing a tint of red to her cheeks that was just a shade darker than her hair. Among the few stories she had told Rose about the Avengers and her missions, she had mentioned him quite a few times. She nearly forgot.

"Some things just aren't meant to be."

"Hm."

They sat there for a few moments longer, just watching the peaceful scenery pass by. This is the closest Rosalie has ever felt to someone, she wasn't sure if Natasha felt the same way but it was special. She hadn't realized how important Nat truly was to her until now. As long as she knew Natasha had her back, Rosalie had hers.

Not like she needed it, but still.

"It's getting dark." Natasha spoke up.

"Yeah." Rosalie shrugged as she played with the ends of her long, dark hair.

"Want to go..pig out and order some pizza at your place? I don't think I can go back to headquarters right now. I need a break from all this Tony versus Steve nonsense."

Nat's suggestion brought a grin to Rosalie's face. It had been the first time she'd smiled all week.

"I'd love to."


End file.
